Murphy being bankrolled by London and branch office following London’s political agenda

A leading New Labour donor is to fund the party’s fightback in Scotland as it attempts to avoid losing dozens of crucial seats to the SNP.

Sir David Garrard, who was embroiled in a “cash for honours” scandal under the previous government, is preparing to make a big donation to Jim Murphy in coming weeks.

David Garrard’s Wikipedia entry has been wiped out / sanitised with no background information. Why? But I am sure some instigative journalist will do some digging and BBC 2015 or Bernard Crick will an attack dog piece rather savaging a 20 year novice!

Lord Fink is a member of the Friends of Israel along with David Garrard and Jim Murphy.

The Labour election machine is now on full alert. On Monday January 19 Ed Miliband and his staff moved the leader’s office from the Commons to party HQ at Brewers Green just off Victoria Street. And there they will stay until they know the outcome.

The polls continue to suggest that the health service remains either the first or second voter priority and with A & E figures deteriorating further Labour will not change its focus.

Miliband will chair the daily gathering of shadow ministers including Douglas Alexander, chair of strategy, Lucy Powell, his deputy and former Miliband chief of staff, Ed Balls and Harriet Harman.

That is the whole 2015 campaign in a nutshell. I did say over on the Groaniard that I intended to vote for the party I wanted and was greeted with a wave of horror from a number of hacks who clearly think I should vote for who they want.

O/T; The marked increasing incidence of recurring catastrophic leadership disasters in the, “UK Civil Service” is of concern. Very many inadequate civil servants are/have been promoted well beyond their abilities, through their shadowy, “Common Purpose” network contacts. Hence the increasing number of financial, transport, media, immigration and other disasters which have and continue to blight the UK. The UK civil service, put in place by the public, charged with the mission always to serve their needs is not fit for purpose. A Scottish, civil service, with no ties to Westminster, clear of the tentacles of “Common Purpose” would better serve Scotland.

It would be easier to pin down the non-mystic elements of a Jim Murphy policy than to decide who to vote for come May. Back in my day, you gave your bookie’s pencil a pensive sook and made a scratch against your preferred candidate. Job done. Well, not any more apparently.

It is now considered risible to vote SNP simply because you think they will best represent Scotland’s interests at Westminster. Far better to vote Labour they say, to avoid getting the Tories. Apparently this is what’s called realpolitik. Now I am not sure if this realpolitik thingy quite butters my scone but as my head zips up the back I suppose it’s worth considering.

This is partly down to cowardice I must admit. I haven’t slept since the rumour started orbiting the Twat-o-sphere that Labour activists (possibly both of them) planned on targeting SNP voters outside polling booths, slipping them leaflets proclaiming ‘You are about to vote for a party whose entire cabinet would fondle Beelzebub’s conkers in the upper circle of Her Majesty’s Theatre during the Christmas pantomime if selling the party’s soul meant cleaving the Union in twain’.

This was worrying. I contacted BBC Scotland hoping for clarity. They regaled me with their balanced reporting fact of the day: that every SNP voter, as a condition of membership, is compelled to suckle at the teats of the nine-horned beast in a dungeon near Strichen. ‘Remember’, they cautioned, ‘a vote for the SNP is a vote for Mephistopheles’.

That swung it. No way did I want Auld Nick at Holyrood.

And if I vote Labour I’ll get the free Irn Broon Lucky Bag. In exchange for the mere surrender of my critical faculties and the general abandonment of everything I have ever believed in, or lived for, I’ll get the basic Vow, Vow plus, Smith squared, and five pledges. And that’s on top of Lord Smiffy’s commitment to deliver the powerhousiest parliament in Christendom. I doubt if Nicola ‘so-called’ Sturgeon could match that.

There. I feel better now. All this ‘vote Tweedledee get Tweedledum’ stuff was making my brain feel as if it had been hurtled round the Large Heedrum-a-Hodrum Collider a couple of billion times before being smashed into a quark.

I reckon others might benefit from this method too, risk free. Say for example you are a Willie Rennie enthusiast. In this case, you might vote for the Monster Raving Looney Party in the vague belief that this will return a lib-dem government. If so, you are covered. Because even your bold move accidentally lets the MRLP in by the back door, ushering in a minority Conservative government propped up by lunatics, the MRLP’s policies differ from those of the lib-dems only to the extent that one trouser leg differs from another. And everybody else wins too since Willie Rennie will be on Job Seekers Allowance. Win-win-win-win-win!

Anyway, time to go. If matron catches me out of my bed it’ll be the ice-bucket challenge and a night in the stocks for yours truly.

What is more revealing is that none of our supine press corps has taken him to task over his recruitment of staff from tax avoidance specialists.

Ian Murray is currently using the services of a seconded member of staff from the accountancy giant PwC, worth £45,000. Only last week the chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee said it was ‘inappropriate’ to accept unpaid help from the firm accused by MPs of promoting tax avoidance schemes on an ‘industrial scale’.

Labour want the UK to be like the states – a two party system. In fact, scratch that – Scottish labour thought Scotland was a one party region. Trouble is they have failed and Scottish people have woken up.

The absurdity highlighted by the Daily Mash is how much some parliamentarians hate democracy and the public. If the labour and lib dem constituency MPS have been working hard for their constituents then they have nothing to fear. Relying on 2nd or 3rd preference votes in a first past the post system smacks of desperation and deception.

Why are they so afraid of the judgement of the honest people of this land? Surely Margaret Curran (for example) just needs to point to her voting record, her attendance, her good work in her constituency and her selfless furthering of their interests during her tenure and she’ll be a shoe-in.

Or is that what she is afraid of highlighting, hence vote for me or else….

That’s why the Arab Spring happened, Podemos was born & Syriza. All signs that the people in those countries have woken up to the corruption & lies in their governments. We are the same but still a bit behind the curve but Scotland is getting there.

England (where I live) is miles behind Scotland though. They are the ones who need to wake up & see what is happening to them & in their name.Scotlan’s indyref debate made Scots look about them & much of what they saw they didn’t like so we saw the support for left leaning parties increase. England is nowhere near that stage yet except perhaps in the North of England.They want indy too!

@ Ronnie Anderson
Yes you’re right Ronnie,I found it fascinating.I learned more tonight & from the article she did for iScot magazine than I did from all the press coverage at the time of & since the bombing happened.

That is funny because our imperial red tory masters are on the way out. Everyday in every way is a teamGB satire day, if you’re a YES voter. Its just such a shame we didn’t shake off control of Scotland by England once and for all though or, tragicomedy. Wonder which middle east country future PM Milliband will attack next, way of life/satire. They’re not the type of twerps and buffoons to attack Russia though, unless they can nuke them from afar.

I don’t know enough about Scots justice to be able to give a view but if it’s anything like the English system then I would agree with you.

It certainly was strange that 3 judges sat in place of a jury. That usually only happens where the establishment wants a specific outcome & they don’t trust a jury of peers to come to the same conclusions as they eventually did. It just smacks of a cover up to me. Megrahi was guilty of being a foreigner & a convenient scapegoat to me but then what do I know-I’m a complete outsider.

There has been a lot of speculation about the outcome of the election in May and it anybody’s guess what it will be but it is interesting in the perspective of the independence movement.

Regardless of the actual outcome, there is a distinct possibility that there could be a coalition government and that the SNP could get at least a dozen seats and could well play a part in that coalition government.

If that does occur then the SNP could legitimise themselves south of the border as a serious political party much in the same way as they have done here with their 2 terms at the Holyrood.

If this does happen then given the next referendum this should generate a bit more sympathy and respect for the independence movement as well as allaying the fears of No voters as the SNP will have shown that they have acted responsibility at the UK level and therefore will ensure there are good relations with rUK post independence.

This is a big assumption and there are other possibilities like the hypothetical coalition falling apart quite quickly or that the majority of Scottish MP’s belong to the SNP yet the Tories are able to form a majority government but the risk is worth taking and the only way to do this is through tactical voting.

A lot of people support other parties or are ideologically against the SNP but this one day in May they need to put this aside and vote for them to ensure we at least try to get as many SNP MP’s elected in order to legitimise the notion that independence is a force for good in the publics conscious both here and in the rest of the UK.

If a vote for the SNP is really a vote for the Tories then if I vote for the SNP AND for Labour, which is claimed to be a vote tor UKIP, then the one vote should cancel the other out, But if a vote for The Lib/Dems is really a vote for UKIP and I vote for both UKIP and LibDems then that should cancel both UKIP and LibDems out too. That only means the only one I’ve not voted for is the Greens so they should be the next government.

Oh! Wait – if I vote for more than one party and everyone else does the same then all those votes will be spoiled and the Green voters who only voted greens will be the only party to get votes so the next government will still be greens and the opposition will be the Monster Raving Loonies/independents coalition

Megrahi. The Unionists – Blair co opted the Scottish justice system. An appeal would have taken years, with no result. The evidence is buried under the Official Secrets Act, which applies to the Scottish Gov. Westminster even refuse to realise relevant letters.

The Chilcott verdict has been held back by Heywood and unelected Civil Servants.

Robert, no need to get your kilt just yet. Your explanation seems clear as a mountain stream to me. I thank you for shining a 10 watt light into my darkness on this.

Perhaps what’s needed is an Electoral Enigma Machine. All the keys represent political parties and the whole contraption would be programmed by Stu. Pressing first the party you intend to vote for and then the party leader whose opinion you seek lights up other keys to indicate the parliamentary consequences of your selection from their point of view; Flat Earth Alliance/Lib-Dem coalition for example.

This would lessen the voters’ cognitive load. I expect that the chain of reasoning evidenced by your last comment must have felt like trying to carry out the long division of two Roman numerals in your head and expressing the result as a binary number through the medium of modern dance (this is how I feel after listening to Jim Murphy for more than 90 seconds).

Yes, it is all an elaborate show to make us plebs believe that we live in a free, fair and democratic society.

Judges and lawyers are the lowest of the low in society.

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